...And there goes Christmas

Christmas week was just one huge celebration. Beginning with Melissa and the girls coming come, sledding, the Bethelehem dinner, then the Extended family party then I GOT OFF WORK, Christmas eve celebrations and Christmas Day craziness. I'll try to remember the best of the best.

SLEDDING
Curtis and Matthew took on a huge challenge - 6 KIDS!!! Mom and I met them just as they were about done, and ended up piling the 4 youngest in my car with the heater on while Savannah and Natalie continued going because (as they claimed) "we're HOT!"
Helping Savannah up the hill...that girl can NOT walk in snow. I'll include a video a little later if I can figure out how!

Bama...I'm COLD

Freezing little kids. Mikayla said her fingers were cold and Robert informed us his toes were "feezing"




BETHLEHEM DINNER
Sunday's Bethlehem dinnr is the time when we try to step away from the chaos of Christmas and really remember why we celebrate. Natalie and Savannah slept over at my house and went to church with me. Afterwards, we came home and prepared to partake of our humble dinner. Instead, we had a slightly mid-eastern feast. Over the years we've had so many ideas of what we wanted to eat, and it's expanded to the point that I believe our dinner was 5 times larger than our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. But it was a lot of fun. We had lots of food and some good spiritual moments where we were able to share our feelings about the true meaning of Christmas.
Bethlehem dinner

The Nativity starring Emmy as Mary and Mikayla as Joseph. I think Isabella is an angel.


EXTENDED FAMILY PARTY
Savannah pretty much summed up this night. She told Natalie "last night was our Bethlehm dinner and tonight is CRAZY dinner". Our family has grown and grown and we barely fit anywhere now. So many kids, so much noise and one big Surprise...SANTA and MRS. CLAUS showed up at the end. After a special visit with Cayden and I, they went downstairs to visit with everyone, sing Christmas songs and give out gifts.















CHRISTMAS EVE
Christmas Even was small this year at our house, but the traditional Stroganoff and Nativity went over better than ever in my opinion. With Wise women, wise puppies, grumpy angels and a really young Mary, I thought it was just about perfect.

Mary and Joseph...a bit of an age difference...but it didn't seem to matter to Mary!

The Shepherd was sore afraid...I would have been too - Savannah was one grumpy angel!

Wise Melissa, Wise Grandma and Wise Puppy!

yeah - she's a princess through and through. Are these seriously pajamas??

Snugglebums from Grandma and Grandpa


CHRISTMAS DAY
Christmas started off with Savannah and Mikayla opening Santa gifts, then a little gift giving around the upstairs tree.

My BYU golf towel from Matthew. Here's to wishing for a more perfect season in 2009!

Fighting for presents. I think I was after her gum...



Mid-morning everyone came for brunch, then we headed downstairs to open the very many presents we had for all the kids and each other.
Eating was the best way to make this kid happy. I think he was too excited to sleep

New clothes from Melissa!

Isabella's favorite present

More cute clothes from Melissa. And Savannah's blue streak's compliments of Santa!

Total Chaos

My girls (and puppy-nephew)!





Christmas is always topped off with a delicious dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's house...with a lot of crazy stuff in between.
Hiding in Great Grandma's toy box

Mom and Dad


The hot tub was the perfect way to top off a blizzardy Christmas night. Yes that's a snowball (made of hair and snow) on top of my head. Yes it was nice and warm while we were in, and yes...it was FREEZING when we got out. In Braxton's words..."BRRRRR"

Ring in the Christmas Spirit, but just don't drive there...

Christmas...the lights, the bells...the music. The Tabernacle Christmas Choir concert on Temple Square is the perfect "ringing in" of the season. I hadn't planned on going since I applied for the tickets for my grandma. However, a series of unfortunate events put the tickets, last minute, back into my hands. I decided to go, invited some friends and off we went in plenty of time to arrive, take our seats and enjoy the show. Or so we thought...

I think it should be mandatory to post somewhere...or everywhere...when there is a Jazz game downtown. To fight the traffic caused by the Christmas concert and just the regular round of holiday shoppers would have been harrowing enough. However, if you put into the mix ten gazillion Jazz fans - all running late and running across the street at very inopportune times - you get gridlocks and traffic jams and impossibly crowded streets. After slowly moseying our way up the 5 whole streets we had to go, I finally called Emily and told her to meet me to get her tickets. That way, even if we didn't make it, I didn't have to feel bad about her not getting in. She went in and saved us a place (just in case) and we continued to make our very slow way over to the parking area. Finally - FINALLY we made the turn into the parking garage, only to be greeted with very friendly, white gloved attendents not letting us park anywhere. They waved and waved us on until I was pretty sure we were going to be heading right back out again. But finally they showed us a spot (Reserved for Maintenance it said...believe me, by this time I think I'd have been willing to do some maintenance just for the right to park there!)

We ran...RAN...up the stairs, out the door and made it across the street, becoming one of those annoying pedestrians I talked about earlier - beginning to cross on the "1" second remaining. We made our way into the building, zoomed through the metal detectors, waited while a sweet old lady looked very thoroughly through my purse, ran all the way around to our side of the building, found Emily in the middle of the row, made everyone stand up to let us in, and took our seat just before the prayer. Whew. Was it a marathon or a Christmas concert?

As we caught our breath, I looked through the program and finally realized why it was that Emily was so excited to come...the Grandpa from Gilmore Girls was the featured speaker! How sweet!

The concert was actually very good and I think worth the extra effort to get there. The guests were wonderful, the music beautiful, the organist amazing. Such a perfect way to renew the Christmas spirit in our lives. Now, if only we could find a way to arrive without the driving hassel and stress..that would be a Christmas miracle.

An Imperfectly Perfect Day

Dinner with family is always an adventure. This time, I wasn't even sure who was going to come until late last night. And I decided to make chicken enchiladas. For those of you who don't cook a ton - when you're buying chiles and enchilada sauce, there are different grades of "hotness". No - I don't mean some of them are more beautifuler...there are actually different levels of heat- and I ended up with "burn your tongue and throat the whole way down" fire roasted chilis - and "finish it off with a stomach on fire" enchilada sauce. Of course I was totally unaware until I actually had opened the can and put them in. So I decided to invent my own "mild" enchiladas which didn't have anything enchilada-ee in them at all...so really they were "stuff in a tortilla". I think the kids much prefered those to burning their mouths though (and so did mom). But dinner got made and people came over. We played games while entertaining the kids with about every game and every tv I own. Isabella was her usual charming self and Robert made sure to flirt with Kelly (and hide in her room...and play with all her stuff...yeah - sorry Kelly).

I love this time of year - the family, the presents under the tree, the get-togethers, and even the shopping (ok - I always love shopping). And even though I had to stay up late wrapping so the kids wouldn't find their presents, and even though I thought for a bit that they might actually try to unwrap them when they found theirs under the tree, and even though Isabella refuses to go down the stairs backwards and has the entire family screaming "STOP" every time she comes near the stairs...it was a great night. One of those perfect evenings where it wasn't even perfect but it felt that way anyway, for no reason in particlar...just because it was.

Game time

Happy ???th Birthday MOM!!

So mom is (?) today - and she'll kill me - literally- if I post her age. Suffice it to say she's older than 39 and younger than 80. Now - you do the math if you really want to.

To celebrate we just did the traditional dinner, cake with "mom rocks" written on it...a moose nativity, advent calendars, a little destroying of the play room, an overrun home with grandkids and semi-grandkids (that would be my all my cousin's kids), re-decorating the tree after all the ornaments were taken off by kids, bathrooms destroyed by 2 and 3 year olds locking themselves in, a few tantrums, some make-up hugs, puppy eating people's plants, babies drinking puppy's water...did I miss anything? I think I got pictures of about half of what happened...the rest I'll just have to leave up to your imagination!

"Bama" and Braxton

Mom with Natalie and Emily - no clue where they are looking...but not at the camera!

Moose Nativity from Grandma who found it in yellowstone.

Braxton searching for the ornaments he most wants to take off the tree!

Life is just terrible when you're 1!!

Ok - if you'll take my picture - I'll be happy!

Isabella with Great-grandma and Great-grandpa!

Advent calendars

Jenn and Andrew

Yeah...they knew they were in trouble!

Entertaining the masses!

Cornaments and Dingle Bells

As is tradition for me - I typically spend my after-thanksgiving days helping my mom put up her Christmas stuff. And that's exactly what happened. We worked for hours with my dad putting up lights, trees, decorations etc. Nathan brought the kids by in the afternoon and they ended up staying until after 11pm. So we had a lot of time to entertain those guys - and I put them straight to work! We had a smidge of trouble when they first got to grandma and grandpa's house. Isabelle and Robert in particular weren't very excited to be there. But a few minutes of warming up, and a tree to decorate brought out the Christmas spirit in everyone. They were so good to help unwind lights (or in Isabella's case to twist them all over me) and help put up Ornaments on the tree. Robert was especially enthusiastic..."More Cornaments please, more cornaments please!" And I'd hand him a few. He'd scamper over to the tree and layer them all on his special branch (not two or three - one!) "More cornaments please" he'd say. I hand him a jingle bell ornament. He rings it, and, gasping with delight, exclaims "yes! it's a Dingle bell!"


Ok...has there been a cuter kid?? That is so hard to say because they are all just adorable.




Isabelle is the very special type of person whose excitement and happiness runs over you and makes the whole world golden just because she smiled, waved her little hand in her "hold me" sign and snuggled up next to you. However, that kid can throw a tantrum like I have seldom seen. It was just too cute! When she started crying for her dad, I put her down so she could run over to him. Instead, she bent over at the waist holding her head like "how could you do this to me?" Then she promptly fell to the floor and rolled from side to side in obvious emotional agony over the terrible things she'd been forced to suffer (I think this was the time I tried to take off her jacket. I have no idea why she is so attached...but she got to keep it on the rest of the night, obviously. This is cute once - not all night!).

Since my mom has often showed pictures of me throwing a tantrum when I was about this age, I thought I'd retaliate and show a few pics myself.


From Thanksgiving day - the group of us who did the turkey trot fun run!